Do you have purple martins in your back yard?

Bird bander Jerry Farrell raising the gourd house condominium back up the tall pole after his inspection.

by Mark Daul

Outdoors in Niagara

Now, that's a good
question. There is a chance you do and don't even know it.

Purple martins, in
the swallow family, are similar to a barn or cliff swallow; purple martins are
a little larger, nearly 8 inches in size. Barn swallows, as the name implies,
will be seen frequenting barns (naturally), your garage, and especially they
love horse stables around here. The cliff swallow in our neighborhood is mostly
seen along the edges of the cliffs along Lake Ontario, either right under the
overhang or they love to burrow a deep hole in a sand vein so frequently found
along these shores. Kingfishers hang around these places too, waiting to raid
the nests.

The swallows and
martins diet on winged insects, catching them in flight, but the purple martin
refrains from eating mosquitoes. (They must taste yucky?) Being the biggest of
the swallows, the purple martin has a slightly forked tail, and the barn
swallow has a much longer forked one, and your cliff swallow has no forked
tail. All three are beautifully colored and the adult martin is all glossy
black with a steel blue sheen.

In our area we have
a nationally known, federally licensed, bird bander, Jerry Farrell, who lives
in Lewiston. Banding birds for most of his life, Farrell is known all over the
United States and Canada for his expertise and education of others in this
important field. He is a member of the North American Bird Banding Council
(NABBC) and a member of our local 3F Club on Swann Road, where he manages a
purple martin banding project. All volunteer work.

At a recent meeting
of the Niagara County Pioneers Club, Farrell gave a talk on his purple martin
banding project, and it was quite interesting to all. He said his project
started at the 3F club 35 years ago in the back pastures of the club and it was
never successful. He wondered why, but just felt, well, there are no birds
around here, until one spring day he noticed martins sitting on the wires up
near the club house and he thought to himself, "I should put a martin house up
here."

He did, and the
first year it was a metal box, and it attracted some birds, eight pair, not a
lot, but some. The second year he put plastic gourd houses up and that was a
good year when he attracted 38 birds of which all the offspring were banded.
This project just finished its fourth year and Farrell is elated at its
success. Every year the nests are full of eggs, then baby birds are all banded,
all recorded, and released back into the wild.

Maybe you are thinking,
why band birds? The North American Bird Banding Council was founded in 1923 for
the purpose of "individual identification of birds, which makes possible
studies of dispersal and migration, behavior and social structure, life-span
and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth." Purple martins
are a migratory bird and Farrell says his banded birds have all shown up in
Brazil, where they socialize throughout the winter months, and come back here
to mate and do more serious socializing by raising families, before going back
again for their winter vacation.

Housing can be of
wood, plastic, aluminum, natural gourds or plastic gourds. Plastic gourds you
can buy, and preferably with a rack system like Farrell uses at the 3F club.
Why plastic gourds? Maintenance is important. The gourds are erected on tall
poles, rigged so they can be raised and lowered for servicing; something like
you would your American flag. When lowered to ground level, Farrell and his
army of volunteers can check the eggs at hatching time, check the newborn, and
keep an eye on them until they are old enough for banding before they "fly the
coop."

Farrell
said last year they moved a set of gourds out to the front of the clubhouse and
when they started checking them, he found some birds hauled shotgun wads of
different colors to the nests. The nests were in kind of close to the skeet
range, where they picked them up and carried them to their nests. Farrell said
upon checking with the NABBC and others, no one ever heard of that. Normally,
all is found in these nests are leaves and pine needles, and Farrell said when
they inspected, the eggs were so buried under the wads, he had to pull them out
just to inspect the eggs. The tall poles are good deterrents for climbing
predators like squirrels, raccoons, etc. There are even flying predators, like
hawks, crows, blue jays, and others.

Starting a martin
colony can be fun, and they are a beautiful, graceful bird to watch. You can
attract them to your backyard if it is large enough, because they like lots of
landing room. They don't care for trees and bushes too close to their homes,
because when they land, they come in with a swoop, plus, the trees are good
cover for flying predators. If you want to start a purple martin colony, go to
the library for information or research doing this on the Internet. There are
all kinds of interesting information out there.

One year I was lucky
enough to observe the banding of these birds and get some pictures, all the
while learning and asking questions. The picture you see here is of Jerry
Farrell raising the gourd house condominium back up the tall pole after his
inspection. Notice the birds sitting on the wires waiting for him to finish so
they can get back into their little apartment and check on their families.

Farrell has done
talks and demonstrations for years at outdoor shows, for clubs, for schools and
regularly appears at the Wildlife Festival at the New York Power Authority
grounds in Lewiston every fall. If you have a group that would be interested in
a presentation, give Farrell a jingle at his email: [email protected].

Fishing has been in
the doldrums recently, and everyone has been waiting for the ice to form on
Lake Erie so the Lower River will settle down from the turbulence caused by
Lake Erie winds, but it looks like it will be postponed this year. When it
freezes, the river clears, the fish feel better, and the winter diehards can
get out and catch them. For up-to-date fishing info, check out www.OutdoorsNiagara.com for the
latest.